Gary Wise from Las Vegas

Freezing My Ass Off at the Bottom of the World

Posted by admin on Aug 8, 2008

If you’d told me on any day this year except this one that on the 7th of August, I’d be wearing a toque and a sweater, drinking my coffee black and still be freezing my ass off, I’d have laughed in your face. I’m a proud Canadian. As such, I should be impervious to the rigors of cold, especially at a time of year where over-ambitious air conditioning should be the only means through which frigid temperatures might be applied, am I right?

Incorrect.

Funny things happen to those pre-formed notions when you’re sitting at the bottom of the world. I’m a ten minute drive from Punta del Este, a small Ocean-side city in Uruguay. That’s Uruguay, as in ‘Uruguay is south of the equator’, covering a Latin American Poker Tour for PokerStars and ESPN. If it didn’t occur to you that it’s wintertime south of the equator, I wouldn’t be too ashamed. I forgot myself until I received an e-mail a few hours before departure advising ‘bring a sweater.’ It’s apparent now that long johns, scarf, mittens, snow shoes, electric blanket, turtlenecks and marshmallows for the open flame that I’m aspiring to find now would have been in order.

That’s right. You just read two paragraphs dedicated to my freezing my ass off. If Reinaldo Venegas –editor of Bluff en Espanol– hadn’t given me a hat to maintain some kind of body heat, I might not have managed even that much.

This is an unusual situation I’m in here. Punta del Este is one of South America’s most popular vacation spots from December to March, those months in which you couldn’t freeze magma here. In the off months, the city is more or less deserted, just one of the reasons Uruguay was so pleased to have Stars contribute to their August travel and tourism industry. Aside from the 400 poker players, ‘Stars staff and assembled media, the place is more or less deserted. We’re running amuck.

With the locals abandoning the area for warmer climes, there isn’t too much to do here. There’s a small casino, but playing poker there isn’t much of an option. The rake is 5% with no maximum, a fact that really hits you between the eyes when you see $120 raked from a single pot. The caliber of play in those games is low enough that it’s almost worth the fight against the house, except that the folks dealing the cards don’t know the game and watching them pass pots to the wrong player or take ten minutes to take that three-figure rake or deal 15 hands an hour is entirely tilt-inducing. I figured that out while getting rivered on a $2,500 pot last night*. For the players, the state of the cash games are extra incentive to dominate in the tournament.

* OK, let me say here that I’m very good at taking my beats. In this particular hand, I got all-in on the turn with the board A-5-10 Q while holding A-5 to my opponent’s A-K (and an all-in player’s K-10) only to get rivered by a king. I’m pretty sure I’d have been fine if the dealer didn’t literally take seven minutes to deal that river card, then try to pass me the pot after doing so. Throw in the ironic habit they have of yelling “professionalis!” after every tip. Even I have my limits…I got up.**

 ** Special thanks to uber-blogger Joe Posnanski, whose work inspired my use of the asterisk here. 

The LAPT itself is proving a great success. The room was filled to capacity and then some to start the day. All manner of Latin American celebrities are here along with Humberto Brenes, Barry Greenstein, Greg Raymer, Brandon Cantu and a host of others. These folks are friends of mine, or at least friendlies (write enoug nice things about someone and they’re bound to like you on some level), but it’s nice to get a chance to see them outside the chaos of a WSOP or WPT. For them, a little $2,500 tournament is a nice excuse for a getaway and good times. It has a humanizing effect. Many good meals are bound to come.

The correlation between the pot size and the tournament entry definitely got me thinking. It’s been a good few weeks, with my poker profits somewhere in the $7,000 range, enough to show me that I’ve been learning through watching admidst my absence from the tables. I felt like a superior player in that game last night, yet here i sit on the sidelines while the faces from around that table play poker with the pros. Of course, in a couple of weeks, I’ll have hit a cold streak and will realize it was a ridiculous notion in the first place. Right?

Guess Who’s Playing Poker

Posted by admin on Jul 26, 2008

I’ve been playing nickel-dime poker for most of my life, but I didn’t discover Hold’em until around 2000. Some friends in the Magic: the Gathering community, spurned on by the revelations that Rounders brought to their lives, had invested themselves in limit hold’em, and when I heard they were pulling in a quarter- or half-million dollars a year playing online, I couldn’t help but invest myself in the latest of a string of games to obsess over that have dotted my life.

Sometime in late 2002, I started playing for a living. I mean, I was only grinding 5/10 limit online, playing anywhere from 2-4 tables in a time when people were only figuring out that you could play more than one, but the level of play was awful and i was happy to provide lessons. I made my living for the next couple of years doing that, but after Moneymaker came through, so too did legions of Moneymaker wannabes who were far more diligent about studying the game than I was. When my profit margin slimmed and my eventual business partner approached me about writing about poker, it was obviously time for a change in my life.

When I started wisehandpoker.com, I made the conscious decision to stop playing altogether. My game had gotten stale, I was getting bored of playing and it seemed obvious that in an industry where everyone was trying to get to the table, continuing to work while they got there was a sure way to get ahead. For the next three years, I barely played at all. When I was traveling with the WPT, I might have averaged about two hours a day all told, but I wasn’t playing when I wasn’t on the road; there was more work to do, and playing with rust barely seemed better than playing at all.

What’s the point of all this? It’s background to the revelations I’ve gone through as a player these last couple of months. When I made my way to Vegas for WSOP, I had no real plans to get back to active again, but many conversations, pledges of help from influential friends and a couple of otherwise slow night drew me back to the table. Now, I’m finding it tough to get away.

That night was preceded by my wondering aloud where I might find a low-stakes, tourist-laden gave full of drunkards late on a Friday night. I got a couple of good suggestions, but it was Dan Michalski of pokerati.com who gave me the answer that ultimately satisfied. “Paris” he explained “Doesn’t have a lot of tables and they have no parking. Parking is the key.”

I went to Paris, not a five-minute drive from the Rio, and took a chair in a $1-$2 game. On my first hand, I got paid off with aces. On my third hand, I flopped four tens, then showed them to amuse myself after the action folded on the turn only to find out I’d won a high-hand jackpot by showing. ‘Winning,’ I realized ‘is fun.’ That night, I walked out with $700 after less than six hours of play.

Since that night, there have been highs and lows. There was a night where I lost $930 in that same Paris $1-$2, mostly due to getting called on large turn bets by the same flush-drawing moron only to have him hit and check it down three times. There was a $1,500 win at the Caesar’s $2-$5 which included a hand where four players were all-in before my action on the turn with the board reading A-J-J 10 and me holding pocket aces (No, there were no pocket jacks to be found). All told, i finished the summer up about $5,000, a good payout for the time invested and the stakes I was playing. By the end of the summer, I’d decided to start taking my poker game more seriously.

Before the summer, my cousin Dave invited me to join him at a game he’d been a regular at for a couple of years. He sold it to me as ‘$5/$5, $500 buy-in. A fun game amongst young white collar professionals’. I went just before heading for Vegas, not realizing the $500 ‘buyin’ was just a way of giving the players a taste before the real buyins started later in the night. There’s usually a total of around $20K on the table. I was under-rolled and under-prepared for that reality. I lost $860, and while the offer was made to “put me on the sheet”, I knew I was outmatched, especially by a proudly Asian ‘kid’ (he’s a lot older than he looks) named Justin sitting to my left who repeatedly outplayed me post-flop. Embarrassed and seeking escape, I breached etiquette by leaving early and emptying a chair. I got a lift home from Dave, stopping at a bank machine to get him the extra $360 he’d provided for my one rebuy (My stack was at $140) and then thanking him with an apologetic tone to my voice, feeling as if I’d let him down as I left the car.

Last night, I was more prepared. I showed up with a couple of grand this time, understanding the game was a little beyond my roll, but at the same time weighing that with a) the potential for whales b) the importance of networking (there are some influential folks in this game) and c) the need to appease my newfound fever. I sat down between our host-who-will-not-be-named (a very good guy who asked that his name not be mentioned here) and a new player to the game. By the end of the night, the new player would drop nine grand.

All told, this was what a good home game should be. There was a beautiful dealer named Hazel who deflected random come-ons and locker room jokes like a pro. There was comaraderie, good jokes and good times, even enjoyed by the losers. There were three plasmas, sports talk, plastic cups full of this and that and I can’t say that a single person left without having had a good time, including the $9,000 man.

With my moderate skills reawakened in Vegas, my results were indicative. This time around, I felt confident identifying the fish and the sharks, spotted a couple of tells, kept tight when the game got really, really loose (5/5 blinds, raise pre-flop to $45, six callers??), withstood Justin’s mocking my refusal to play more than Iwanted and made $3,000. More than the money, the night was about continuing what I’d started in Vegas, getting myself started in Toronto and making some new friends along the way.

After the game, Hazel, Justin, a friend Steve (who plays like a pro but insists that he isn’t) and i went for some pancakes at 5:30AM, the right way to end a long night at the felt. We talked over hands, talked about my work a little bit and by the end of the meal, I’d been invited to head to another game tonight. I’m going back to the host-who-will-not-be-named’s place for another game on Sunday. The $9K man may be back too.

It’s good to win. There’s nothing quite like leaving a table feeling like you’ve earned the victory. I didn’t flop a set, straight or flush at any point, survived my making one truly atrocious play where I ignored an obvious read, costing me $700 early in the night. I survived the panic and steam that came with it and lived to see the other side. That’s a satisfying feeling.

I get the feeling I’ll be writing about Justin, Hazel and the others more and more in the weeks to come. Justin especially is insistant upon it, so as long as he keeps entertaining with his sharp tongue and lessons in post-flop play, I’ll be happy to oblige. If the wins keep piling on, you should reap the benefits if you keep coming around. I mean, I have to share my love of the game with someone, right?

G

Living Up To a Low Standard: Another Take to Come on the WSOP Ladies Event

Posted by admin on Jun 9, 2008

I don’t usually feel much pressure when it comes to writing good articles. I mean, I think I do a pretty solid job overall. I have a solid understanding of the languages of poker and English, I can string sentences together, they’re usually juxtaposed nicely… I get the job done, even if it’s a little late sometimes. Today though, I’m staring pressure straight in its manicured nails, its fashionable high-heeled boots and yes, occasionally its cleavage. I’m doing my best to avert my eyes though.

Last year, I wrote an article called ‘1268 Ladies and a Gentleman’ for ESPN. The first half of the article was about Allen Cunningham’s bracelet win; the second part was a scathing but obviously (or so I thought) tongue-in-cheek look at the ladies event. When it got published, people got pissed; one USA Today blogger, apparently unfamiliar with high-brow stylistic devices like sarcasm, called me “A good impression of Peter Griffin writing about poker” and not because Peter Griffin is a satirical character. Of course, it’s not like I didn’t expect it, considering it contained gems like;

“On top of the hugging, I heard all of the following at the tables;

• “You played that really well!”
• “Let’s all introduce ourselves!”
• “Where did you get that dress?”
• “Good luck, all-in!”
• “Three queens! That’s really good!”
• With one out in the deck; “You can still win!”
• Cat-like hissing

… I mean, is this a poker game or a cotillion? Imagine in your mind’s eye, a pudgy, balding, cynical, pompous man in his mid-thirties projectile vomiting. That’s me. Hi!”

**Teehee**

I have to admit, I still get a perverse little tingle when I read that, but a point I made in the aftermath was right on the money if I do say so myself:

“I felt I could write what I did because all things being equal between the sexes, the habits of women are just as susceptible to parody as those of men are, and to not treat them as such would be to suggest they aren’t equal.”

There you have it. Men and women, sharing the table, sharing the exposure to my sharp tongue. Thing is, I haven’t sharpened my tongue towards men in particular. I figure its about time that I rectify that.

After the final table’s done, I’m going to write something about just how stupid male poker players can be in relation to our maleness. I’ll throw in a little something about being one woman against nine guys in a locker room setting and how it feels to be on the receiving end of that (I was today for a brief moment).

Thing is, after the attention last year’s article got, I’ve gotten a lot of knowing looks in anticipation of this year’s. I hope I can live up to the low standard I set in ’07.

Gary Wise
gary@wisheandpoker.com